Taking a look at Hulu.com

I think most of us at the IAB meeting who had not seen a demo of Hulu.com (it’s in so-called private beta, and I couldn’t find Hulu.com president Jason Kilar after his speech to get a free password), were suitably impressed with the News Corp. and NBC joint venture, which, as he pointed out, isn’t a YouTube killer at all, but rather, plans to be the central Web property for “premium content.” (I think that's the abridged version of saying that the content never includes seven minutes of video of someone's cat peeing into a toilet.) Part of what makes it cool is the elegant, simple interface, which makes YouTube look like your crazy aunt’s attic by comparison. But enough already with the YouTube analogies. In addition to the fact that the quality of the video streams is well—fuckin’ awesome!—another thing about Hulu that stands out is the ability to search by any number of metrics. I think it included most viewed, favorited and so forth. Other cool features: the ability to send parts of clips to friends, embeddable video, and that Hulu isn't going for the walled garden approach, using content only from the partners. It'll, well, find "Lost" for you, even though it's on ABC. Not so good: that the ad model so far doesn't allow for revenue sharing with other sites which embed its content. When are these video sites going to get a clue on that issue?
If I have time later today, I'll post more about IAB, but other duties call.